DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (Journal d'un curé de
campagne) A
France (110 mi) 1951 d: Robert Bresson
France (110 mi) 1951 d: Robert Bresson
Easily the most personal film in Bresson’s lifetime, a
deeply Catholic experience that comes closest to defining his mortal
soul. This is the film that set the tone for Bresson films to follow, all
dealing with grace and redemption, spare, minimalist, no excess emotion,
without a single shot that is not needed, carefully creating a visual sphere of
what it is to be human, recreating mechanical gestures, physical movements,
parts of the body, like hands and feet, using a voiceover narration that reads
what the audience sees written into a Priest’s diary (in Bresson’s own hand, by
the way), adapting a novel written by Catholic author Georges Bernanos, who
also wrote Mouchette
(1967), perhaps approaching the concept of God’s grace from opposite
directions. Non-professional actor Claude Laydu, a devout Catholic who
spent several months fasting and living among priests prior to the film, is
excellent as the frail young country Priest who feels irrelevant to the
surrounding rural community that all but ignores him. Eating little more
than stale bread mixed with wine due to a painful stomach condition, he
struggles to fight against his own physical and human limitations throughout
the entire film, where he approaches each person from the position of goodness,
love, and God’s grace, person to person, soul to soul, never proselytizing or
reading scripture, never defending his own actions, but taking the unpopular
view that we can all grow closer to God in the way we lead our lives, something
mocked and scoffed at as irrelevant and naïve by most, yet he persists, never
gaining the upper hand, but matching the cynicism of the local community that
feel church only exists for marriages, funerals and Sunday services. The
Priest, on the other hand, sees every living moment as a conversation between
heaven and earth, where humans can only persevere to lead better lives and
become more devout believers.
Of interest, there is a musical score by Jean-Jacques Grunenwald that plays throughout, though never interfering or rising at climactic moments, also several of the central characters had professional film careers, including Nicole Maurey as Miss Louise, the only one to attend mass every day, but also the mistress of the richest and most influential man in town, the Count (Jean Riveyre) and his wife the Countess (Rachel Bérendt), whose spoiled and manipulative daughter Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral) generates much of the action by feigning thoughts of suicide (Ladmiral committed suicide in real life 7 years later) in order to prompt the young Priest’s urgent involvement in her unhappy family life, taking advantage of his inexperience and naïveté, but he soon finds himself wallowing in turbulent waters, especially facing the unruffled pillars of high society in the well educated and placidly confident Countess who has little use for the Priest’s ideas, finding him childish and out of place, but politely tolerates his presence in her home, all leading to one particular moment in the film, a transcendent moment that is excruciatingly intense, where the core of a man's beliefs are challenged, even shattered momentarily, but where the Priest exercises his free will as a man in the hands of God, acting on his own terms in accordance with spiritual values, not those of the local church and social hierarchy, but surprisingly persuasive nonetheless in order to ascend to a place reached by no one else in the film, and certainly no one else we know in our own lives. This character's struggle can’t help but guide our own actions, which is the effect of the film, turning this socially isolated and personally anguished individual into a modern day saint, where leading by example brings us closer to a state of grace.
As it happens in small towns, the Priest’s presence becomes fodder for gossip and scandal, where the Count and his bratty daughter start vicious rumors about having him removed for needlessly interfering in his family affairs, whose own scandalous behavior, of course, is wiped under the rug in an attempt to divert attention away from his own public scrutiny. An elderly Priest (Adrien Borel) is brought in to consult with the young priest, finding no fault in his scrupulous methods, understanding that Priests are not expected to be liked, but feared and respected through the implementation of rigid discipline and authority, reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov where the church would no longer recognize the humble origins of a human Christ even if He should return, having converted Him into eternal perfection incapable of human flaws. But this young Priest has no use for implementing a fictitious or condescending order in the universe that he doesn’t believe in himself, instead finding each day such a painful struggle that he has his own personal difficulties praying, feeling himself unworthy. This struggle takes an interesting turn by the end, where the Priest gets a taste of his own mortality, growing weak and delirious from his illness, having visions blend into real life that can only exist in a Bresson film, where he remains the picture of innocence throughout, guided perhaps by the purity of youth, the uncorrupted souls, where he continually walks among them to become an illuminating light. There’s a wonderful image of the Priest riding on the back of a young man’s motorcycle that nearly brings a smile to his face, another image of liberation and transcendence. While the Priest is completely unassuming, there are prevalent images of iron gates, as if a human life is imprisoned in pride and arrogance while on earth unless adopting a spiritual transformation of forgiveness and love, learning to love even one’s enemies, lessening the weight on each human soul that has its own baggage to carry. There are Christ-like references throughout, a profoundly contemplative work where pain and suffering may be the conduit that drives us closer to the Divine. One of the great religious works, rivaling Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), one that turns questions of the everlasting into an everyday, ordinary experience.
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